There is always a temptation to vote for a second- or third-year guy here, one who simply gets better as a matter of maturing within the league—Anthony Davis would be a good candidate this year, for example.

But the award should go to a player who has significantly changed his game and his place within the league, and no one has done that more than Stephenson, whose performance this year (14.2 points, 7.0 rebounds, 5.3 assists) has transformed him from a fringe player who was nearly out of the league to a potential All-Star.

Ginobili’s main competition comes from Jamal Crawford and Tyreke Evans, but Ginobili has better numbers (12.1 points, 3.4 rebounds, 4.5 assists, 45.2 percent shooting) than Evans and plays for the team that currently ranks second in the West standings.

There was a temptation to write off the 36-year-old Ginobili after last year’s postseason, but he has bounced back nicely.

By the end of the season, it is likely that this will change over to Indiana’s Frank Vogel or Portland’s Terry Stotts, but here at the season’s midway point, Hornacek gets the nod. The expectation around the league was that Phoenix would endure a cellar-bound season and bounce back after a bountiful draft in June.

Instead, Hornacek got his team eight games over .500 when Eric Bledsoe got hurt at the end of December. They will sink some without Bledsoe, and might not make the playoffs, but for now, Hornacek deserves a nod.

This has been a bleak, bleak year for rookies, but Carter-Williams has been the bright spot—and that can be said even with the full knowledge that Carter-Williams is shooting 40.6 percent from the field, 29.8 percent from the 3-point line and 69.6 percent from the free-throw line.

But he has managed to average 17.3 points and 6.5 assists, playing 34.6 minutes per game. Considering only two other rookies (Orlando’s Victor Oladipo and Utah’s Trey Burke) play 30-plus minutes, MCW probably is a shoo-in.

Only three players in the history of the NBA—Bill Russell, Wilt Chamberlain, Larry Bird—have won three consecutive MVP awards, which means the likes of Michael Jordan, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Magic Johnson never did it. The last of Bird’s trio came in 1986, so it has been 28 years since it has happened.

This made the prospects for LeBron James as MVP (he won the last two) dim even from the beginning of the season. Couple that with the continued improvement shown by Durant and the fact that he has had to take over a bigger role for the Thunder in the absence of Russell Westbrook, and the MVP was Durant’s for the taking. He has taken it, certainly.

Durant leads the league with 31.1 points per game, shooting 50.7 percent from the field and 41.0 percent from the 3-point line. He is getting 7.9 rebounds per game, as well as a career-high 5.2 assists, and his 30.9 PER is the best in the NBA. His team is second-best in the league, and with the Heat in a lull, Durant has cemented his MVP case.